Salon owner gets jail for photographing naked customer

A Hartland Township tanning salon co-owner was sentenced to 90 days in the Livingston County Jail for photographing a customer in the nude.

Eric William Matlack, who co-owns Tan del Sol on M-59, also was sentenced Thursday to five years of probation. He declined to make a statement in court.

The 46-year-old complainant testified at an earlier hearing that she was tanning between 3-3:15 p.m. Aug. 9 when “I saw a camera over the wall.” She said she dressed within seconds and walked out of the tanning room, which had a locked door, and the only person she saw was Matlack.

Matlack, 42, initially denied the allegations when interviewed by a Livingston County sheriff’s detective. However, when the detective told him that he “came up with a lot of reasons why I know (Matlack) did this,” Matlack’s response was to ask what would happen if he just did it one time.

Matlack then described to the detective how he got a chair, stood on it and reached above the wall to take the photo, but Matlack denied that he “stretched” as alleged.

“I don’t even know if I had it pointed in the right direction because there’s no photo,” Matlack testified at an earlier hearing.

On Thursday, Assistant Prosecutor Daniel Rose said Matlack’s behavior is a violation of a person’s basic sense of feeling. He said the victim, who did not speak in court, expressed to him how “utterly embarrassing and humiliated” it felt through no fault of her own.

“This is the same reaction women who end up flashed in public feel, only this time in reverse,” he said. “... The idea someone is objectifying you and looking at you as a sexual object takes away a feeling of being safe when you go out your door.”

Defense attorney Timothy P. Macdonald noted that his client was ready to pay restitution to the victim, “who comes first,” and he believes the incarceration and probation time will give Matlack time to reflect and “to make him a better person.” Restitution was about $240.

“He’s trying to take those steps to go forward and do what he has to do — and let’s not kid ourselves, this probation is going to be tough,” the defense attorney said. “It’s akin to any type of addiction. The problem is as Mr. Rose says, it’s not just you, there’s other people (affected). He’s going to have a hard, hard time going through, but I think he can do it.”